Friday 12 May 2006 - Teleconference

Minutes

Start: 11:00 am (UTC+10)

The following topics are also to be discussed:

Action ec-06-011: Secretariat to publish minutes from 21 April 2006.

It was noted that APNIC now issues membership renewal notices 60 days before memberships expire. Many members join in June, so there are many outstanding renewals in this current period.
Expenses and revenue are currently below budget.
It was noted that the current exchange rate is 77.3 which is higher than official forecasts used in the current budget.
The exchange rate movement does raise the prospect that it may not possible to balance the budget at the end of the year. It was noted that the budget forecasts a small loss, based on available forex forecasts.
By the end of April, APNIC had 1,205 members, with the majority still from Australia and in the "small" tier.
The overall membership growth is below the budget.
A lot of the current membership closures are from India, mostly due to members becoming uncontactable or being acquired.
Action ec-06-006: Secretariat to publish minutes from 27 February 2006.

The draft IANA contract has been circulated. There was a discussion of some of the main issues raised by the draft.
It was noted that the draft is called a "contribution agreement", but some people have noted that is really a services contract.
It was noted that there are five statements in the preamble to the contract. It was suggested that some of these clauses may need to be considered carefully, including the phrase about ICANN deriving authority from the US government.
There were general discussions of various other drafting issues in the contract, including the definitions of "business days", "global policies", and "IANA function".
It was noted that the draft does not contain any terms to determine how the fees could be varied. It was suggested to place a cap on annual fee variations.
It was suggested that this draft is not yet complete and that the NRO should request several amendments. The extent to which ICANN will accept amendments is not yet clear.
The process is such that some RIR Boards have told the NRO EC that the process is taking too long. It was noted that the US DoC has until September 2006 to renew its IANA contract. It is proposed to finalise this service agreement before then to ensure that there is no need to renegotiate this with a new player.

There was a discussion of the IGF Study Group 2 (SG2) process in relation to IPv6 addressing proposals.
It was noted that it is not entirely clear whether the IPv6 issue is still being discussed in SG2 or whether it will be referred back to the "appropriate bodies", which would be the RIRs.
Clarification of this will be necessary before deciding whether the NRO should make a formal contribution to SG2.